


Tidings Of Comfort And Joy

by vicjx



Category: The Libertines
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vicjx/pseuds/vicjx
Summary: Christmas fluff, set 1999(ish?). Peter wants Carl to go carol singing.
Relationships: Carl Barat/Pete Doherty
Kudos: 5





	Tidings Of Comfort And Joy

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Songs Of Praise’ is a long-running, religious TV show in the UK, which features hymns during the year and carols at Christmas.

“We need to go Christmas carolling.”

Carl was lounging lengthways across the sofa, immobile but unsleeping, agonising over the grim calamity of his own existence, Peter supposed. So it seemed as fine a time as any to broach the subject.

“Do we?” Carl rolled his head to the side, towards Peter, and opened his eyes. It didn’t sound as if he found the idea objectionable though; Peter even thought he heard a hint of curiosity under that weight of weariness. It spurred him on. 

“Of course! ‘Tis the season!” Peter extolled. “To spread joy and glad tidings and goodwill to all men. And women. And their kids. And their aunty June. And their dog.” He was prepared to continue on to relations thrice-removed and pets of the lower order, gerbils and goldfish and the like, in pursuit of his cause, but perhaps it might not be necessary. - A slight smile parted Carl’s lips. 

“How magnanimous of you.” He wasn’t won over yet but the seed had been sown.

“Yeah! So crack open your best woolly scarf, Biggles!” Peter resisted the urge to lunge and drag Carl into action by the arm, to see him sprawled on the floor with a curse and a thump - although that would’ve been funny. But he did allow himself to stand from his own chair, stride to the sofa and plonk himself down by Carl’s knees, obliging Carl to jerk them away towards the sofa-back at the last second. 

Peter leaned heavily against the frame of Carl’s bent legs and smothered Carl’s protests with his own words: “What do you know, then? _Good King Wenceslas? The First Noel? - Silent Night?_ Everyone knows that.” 

Carl’s face played out a rapid-fire mash-up of conflicting emotions; glowering affront at Peter’s bulldozer intrusion, but definitely a concealed smirk of amusement and a cocked eyebrow of interest-peaked. Accepting the challenge. Carl settled on the latter, and Peter knew that he had him. 

“You underestimate me, Pigman,” Carl teased, flirtatious and beguiling, the way he always should be. “I fucking know them all. After years of enforced festive wassailing with my mum and her mates, I could neck a fucking barrel of home-brewed mulled wine and still sing my way through Christmas _Songs Of Praise_ , word perfect.” He shrugged, as best he could lying on a sofa. “I probably have.” 

Peter guffawed, in triumph but mainly in delight. And at the glorious scene his mind’s eye was envisaging. He may have concocted this plan for a specific reason but Carl’s rousing engagement was worth immeasurably more. “Well, then! Let’s go!” He clapped Carl on one knee and moved to get up. Time to strike while the iron was hot; their social calendars were woefully void, and as far as Peter knew, the bird Carl had been shagging appeared to have given him the boot - or vice versa - so he certainly had no better offers. No one to jingle his seasonal bells at. 

Carl covered Peter’s hand with his own, stopping him in his tracks. “Just you and me? Don’t we need more people?” Carl frowned, seeming more confused than purposely throwing a spanner in the Yuletide works. “Traditionally...” 

The sofa cushion crunched under Peter’s arse as he flopped back down. He sighed, giving it some consideration, although he didn’t see why it couldn’t be just him and Carl. No doubt one of Carl’s myriad of contrived rules and irrational worries that poured forth with alarming, incomprehensible regularity. _Choirs of carollers must comprise no fewer than five persons._

“Well we could take John,” Peter suggested. “He can carry a tune. But I don’t want to split the takings too many ways.” 

“Takings?” Carl’s eyebrows scrunched up. And Peter cottoned onto what the misapprehension might’ve been here. 

He grinned. “Carolling’s just busking, innit? But in the freezing cold with a Santa hat to collect the cash.” - They were, undeniably, piss-poor, and if Carlos thought Peter was above soliciting remuneration in return for musical Christmas felicitations, then he would be wrong. Very wrong.

“For fuck’s sake. I should’ve known it’d be one of your money-making schemes. What happened to ‘ _goodwill to all men_ ’?” Carl snorted. He tipped his head back onto the armrest, away from Peter.

Peter ignored him. “So. You in?” 

There was a pause before Carl replied. But it was a perfunctory one. “Yeah. Call John though. D’you think door-to-door? Or Trafalgar Square?”


End file.
